


Wings

by Changeling (Thiswasmydesign)



Series: Taakitz week 2 [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: 2taakitz2week, Day 3, F/M, M/M, Platonic Soulmates, Promptfic, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate AU, Wings, added Blupjeans, added lucretia/davenport, added merle/hunger (Mer-ger?), and I'm sorry but I couldn't resist; added angst, quote prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-07-24 01:19:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16170665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thiswasmydesign/pseuds/Changeling
Summary: For day 3 of 2taakitz2week.When you first found your soulmate you "fledged". Your wings grew, and they could only be hidden again when you and your soulmate met for a second time.Everyone Taako knew had their wings. In this world, what sort of self-respecting wizard needed to waste a spell slot to feather fall?& part 2; Merle's wings caused more problems than they solved.& part 3; (because I just can't leave this alone) Lup was too stubborn to let wings get in the way of anything.& part 4; Davenport had to remain professional.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The millionth soulmate AU in the fandom, but that was the prompt for 2taakitz2week and I hope I've made it slightly different maybe? There are only so many ways to do this, after all!

Taako chose to hang back and glared at the edge of the moon base when the others carried on regardless, dropping out of the sky and down to Lucas’ lab, ready to fight. The last time he’d kept pace with Magnus as they approached an obstacle the ridiculous man had thrown him over his shoulder and carried him. He would not be allowing that affront to his dignity ever again.

Magnus might have been heavy, but his bronze feathered wings were huge and could easily carry the extra weight. Even Merle sported a pair of his own, speckled grey and messy but perfectly functional.

Taako didn’t like to admit that he had never ‘fledged’. Almost everyone he knew had found their soulmate, even people who were absolute scum of the earth. While they lived happy lives together, he was alone. He felt the absence keenly, but the pull that was meant to draw him to his soulmate had never led him anywhere. He was used to it. He didn’t care anymore.

Taako flared the umbrastaff, turning to wink at the Director before allowing himself to fall backwards over the edge of the base. The umbrastaff gave him the perfect excuse not to present functional wings, making it look like a fashion decision rather than the sorry situation he was actually in. After all, it would look weird if he didn’t fly down under his own steam. In this world, what sort of self-respecting wizard needed to waste a spell slot to feather fall?

* * *

 

Wings didn’t manifest immediately.

Some people would wake with their wings the morning after meeting their soulmate for the first time with absolutely no idea which of the people they met the day before fulfilled that role. Usually people would just retrace their steps, visiting all the same locations they had the day before until they ran into someone who was doing the same thing, their new wings obvious because they could not be retracted until they met their soulmate again. It was simple, it was foolproof, and it was completely impossible for Taako.

“What the fu-uck?” he murmured under his breath as he stared at himself in the mirror.

His wings were midnight blue and shone with flecks of silver, almost perfectly mimicking the stars in the night sky. They were sleek and glossy, twice his height when folded, and completely unexpected.

How could he have fledged? He tried to think back on the day before, to retrace his steps in his mind. It had been Candlenights, and he had met so many people from the base before the incident with Lucas’s lab. None of them had caught his attention, not even for a moment. It would be just his luck, he supposed, if his soulmate had been Lucas. The geeky mad scientist definitely wasn’t his type, but people often said that about their soulmates until they got to know them.

What if it was some randomer from the base, some nobody? Taako wasn’t a nobody kind of a guy.

At least he was a wizard, and he could cast illusions over his wings to hide them. He’d be able to get on with things as usual. No one would need to know he had no soulmate before yesterday, and no one needed to know he’d kind of found them. When he met them again it would be obvious anyway, because he’d be able to get rid of the blasted things.

* * *

 

The grim reaper didn’t sleep. He was in the middle of catching a bounty when it happened. He dodged out of the way of a particularly nasty ray of frost (definitely a crit twenty) only to have a freezing pain strike the new extension to his shoulder blade.

His scythe tore through the air, ripping the soul from the necromancer’s body and creating a portal all in one sweep. Screaming and thrashing the necromancer fell into the Eternal Stockade. The portal closed with a snap behind him.

He folded the pair of raven’s wings around himself, frozen in shock.

How could this be possible? He was dead. He couldn’t have a soulmate. That wasn’t how it worked.

But he had wings now, and they were irrefutable proof that this was exactly how it worked.

Who had he met in the last twenty-four hours?

It had been a bizarre day, but not a busy one. The necromancer he had just dispatched to the Stockade wasn’t his soulmate, otherwise he would have been able to make the wings disappear.

There were four other bounties he had tried to collect the day before.

Three of them had wings.

The other had made a rather explicit threat regarding tentacles.

He hadn’t met anyone else. Not a soul.

Taako Taaco, dead more times than any self-respecting elf should have died and still full of life, was an unlucky man. After all, who would want to be paired with the grim reaper?

Wings that he couldn’t control would be a huge problem. Whether the elf liked it or not they would have to meet again, at least once more.

Kravitz raised his scythe, hesitated, and cast disguise self over his wings, glad for his expanded spell list as a reaper. He might be an unwelcome soulmate but he didn’t have to rub it in the elf’s face.

The scythe tore through reality, the tear in reality showing the elf in front of his mirror, wings arced tightly behind him. They were the most beautiful wings he had ever seen.

“Hey Skeletor,” Taako sounded exhausted. Though his wings held elegantly behind him, his shoulders were slumped. “Think you could come back later? You can’t kill me now, I’m busy.”

Kravitz had to admit, he had expected a worse reaction. The elf didn’t even have the courtesy to look afraid. At least, not of him. There was a desperation in his eyes as he assessed his own wings, and his finely manicured hands were shaking.

“I didn’t come here to kill you,” he promised. Part of him, the sensible part, thought he should just step back through his portal and leave, but the remainder was still transfixed by those midnight wings.

“That’s good… Still, Ghost Rider, think we could do this another time?”

Kravitz should definitely just leave. Let Taako retract his wings, figure it out for himself when he was alone. The elf would know the truth, and be relieved that he didn’t have to pretend to like the Grim Reaper or risk being killed.

Soulmates weren’t always nice. There were many documented cases of abusive soulmates deciding that if they couldn’t have the one whose wings fledged for them, no one could. With a soulmate like the Grim Reaper, of course Taako would be afraid of soulmate homicide. Kravitz would never dream of such a thing, but the elf wouldn’t know that.

“I’m cancelling your bounty,” he resolved aloud instead, dragging flesh over his bones so that he looked as unthreatening as possible.

“Yeah…” the elf flexed his wings, and in a moment they disappeared completely. For just a second Kravitz waited with bated breath for him to realise what that meant, but it seemed he hadn’t retracted the appendages. The illusion Taako cast was flawless. No one would ever guess that the wings were even there. He spun to Kravitz, expression coming to life. “Is that all you wanted to say? You know, I’m a busy elf, lots to do. If you still need to chat I’ll have to check my diary. How does the first of never sound?”

“How about Tuesday?” Kravitz tensed, hardly believing he had just asked that. Taako raised an eyebrow.

“Is that your way of telling me when I’m going to die? Just so you know, cha’boy’s not going out without a fight.”

“I… this… wouldn’t be strictly for business?” he hedged reluctantly. He should definitely just quit while he was ahead. The astral plane offered a perfect place to retreat. He should just go.

“A date with death?” Taako grinned, no joy reaching his eyes. “Cool, cool… Still, unless you haven’t noticed, cha’boy’s taken.”

The wings re-emerged, fluffing out and rustling.

“…okay,” Kravitz hardly believed how close he was in that moment to letting his own newly fledged wings be seen, but his concealing spell just held with an on-the-nose wisdom save. “I… I should just… go.”

He opened his hand, his scythe pulling itself together from the shadows and tearing a hole in reality. He had almost stepped through it when a chill touch grabbed his previously blasted wing. He failed his wisdom save.

“Holy crap, bird boy…” Taako yelped, his chill touch dispelling before it could do any damage. Kravitz desperately wanted to leap through the portal. Only the thought that the grim reaper could not be seen to run away held him in place.

Taako was staring for a long time before he finally seemed to snap out of it. When he did the first thing he did was retract his own wings.

“I…” Taako gasped, reaching round behind him and spinning like a dog chasing its own tail as he tried to find the point where the wings had been attached. His long ears had laid flat back against his skull, betraying fear. “You… they’re new?”

“They are.”

Taako’s breathing was heavy and echoing in the small room. Time seemed to drag on as they both remained, frozen.

“I’m not yours.” Taako’s tone was defensive, and his fingers sparked with magic. “I’m Taako. From TV. You don’t get to claim me just because of some feathers.”

Kravitz recognised the archaic sentiment. It had been out of fashion even when he was alive, but even now there were some people who seemed to find the idea romantic. Kravitz had lived too long and seen too much to think that being someone’s soulmate meant you had any claim on them.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he assured the elf. Taako didn’t look like he trusted Kravitz at all, but some of the vitriol in him seemed to fade slowly away, leaving him wringing his hands nervously. It broke Kravitz’s heart to see him like that. He wasn’t sure what he could say that would help. But he was an old romantic, so he pointed to his own wings. “But from the moment these appeared, I’ve belonged to you.”

The silence lingered for a long moment.

Taako doubled over, laughing. “Did you really just say that?”

Kravitz cringed, but would not back down. Whether Taako wanted it or not, whether it was cheesy or pathetic or stereotypical, he knew it to be the truth.

The elf sauntered across to him, his confidence back. He reached out a manicured hand to run through the raven black feathers. “So. Tuesday?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After time was taken from them, Merle couldn't remember how he got his wings, or why they were so badly damaged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought it was a shame Merle doesn't get soulmate fics (there's only one other in ao3), so I've wrote one for him myself.  
> It's bittersweet.  
> ps do Merle and the Hunger/John have a shipping name? I haven't found one so I'm advocating for shortening Merle/Hunger to merger

“Holy shit! Hold on tight!”

The bond engine spluttered and stuck, the rotors catching and spraying feathers in all directions. Davenport flew around the ship, pushing buttons as he went, directing Magnus, Barry and Taako to repair the small holes that opened up in the hull. The ship pitched to the left, losing momentum and altitude rapidly.

Merle took his first breath back alive with this horror unfolding around him and wondered what on earth the team had been getting up to since he had died.

“Captain?” Lup and Lucretia were clinging to the sides of the ship, looking with horror out of the front window. The ground was getting too close for comfort. “Captain!?”

“Almost there!” Davenport slammed a fist on the engine start button on the counter and they all breathed a sigh of relief as the familiar hum restarted. The captain took his seat at the head of the ship, piloting them upwards and away from danger.

“Did you hit a bird?” Merle wondered. The others all looked to him, beaming and relieved.

Magnus scooped him up first, hugging him tightly. The others were more sedate, but still welcomed him back happily.

“Do you need some time, or can we debrief?” Lucretia asked, her pens poised over her notebooks already. Merle shrugged. “Well then, tell us all you can about the Hunger.”

“His name’s John…”

* * *

 

It took a certain amount of courage to attempt to parlay with the Hunger for a second time. Merle was sure that he would be killed again, but maybe the more he did this, the Hunger – John – would get fed up of killing him and actually decide to talk eventually. At least he knew he would come back. The first time had been a leap into the unknown, not knowing for sure whether he would regenerate when they left the world behind at the end of the year.

John had changed since Merle last saw him. He looked less surprised by the parlay and definitely less hostile. He also possessed a pair of tarry black wings, folded at his back. They cast shadow over the entire room, blocking the light from the large window behind John.

“Interesting,” John stood from his seat, wings flexing. “Interesting, it seems like you were telling the truth… sorry about… killing you before…”

It was easier to fall into conversation with John than Merle would dare to admit. He would have to be very careful about what he said, or this could become very dangerous for them and for the entire mission. But John was not unreasonable. Their conversation lasted longer this time. John didn’t burn him up right away.

Merle didn’t question John about the wings. He didn’t have them out before, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have them hidden. The Hunger had devoured an entire realm since they had last met, so if the wings were new, maybe John had found his soulmate there. The implication that he had killed and devoured them aside, Merle was happy for him.

It hadn’t changed the Hunger’s goal, the desire for power.

“There’s something I’m trying to do, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t… bored, I guess? It’s been kind of nice to talk to somebody,” the Hunger offered a trade, information in exchange for the same in return. It was an easier negotiation than Merle had expected.

By the time John’s expression turned stern, and he was overtaken by the blazing agony of fire devouring his very bones, Merle was almost surprised. He’d actually been enjoying himself, and John had seemed to be too.

* * *

 

“Crap crap crap crap crap!”

Davenport scurried around the ship, activating emergency systems left right and centre, trying to get it under control.

“What the flaming fuck!” Lup was on the ground, scrabbling at the sides for purchase, trying to right herself.

The ship listed sideways, flipping upside down.

“Merle, don’t just stand there, help!” Barry grabbed him and dragged him to the back of the ship, repair kit in hand and together they started to plug the holes left by the heat of the malfunctioning bond engine.

The ship flipped again. At the back of the ship nearest the engine Merle and Barry were covered in loose feathers.

“What do you have against birds?” Merle accused, dashing the worst of the feathers out of his face and spitting one from his mouth so that he could continue fixing the back wall.

“There were no birds!” Lucretia was thoroughly documenting everything they were doing – or, as Merle put it, being absolutely no use whatsoever. “This started before we entered the planar system.”

“Shit, what if this happens every time now?” Taako reasoned. “Because we squished a bird last time?”

“That wouldn’t be good,” Davenport commented as he was finally able to hit the button and get the engine back running. “The engine’s keeping this thing together. If it breaks…”

“We’re toast.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Barry suggested, “we’ve brought creatures with us before and they haven’t been recreated the next cycle. Why would this bird be?”

Merle collected one of the largest feathers from the ground, stroking it between his fingers. It was the length of his forearm – it would have to come from a huge bird, even if it was one of the largest of the bird’s feathers. Mottled grey and black, the feather also didn’t bring to mind immediately any of the birds he could recall from the last plane they visited.

He volunteered for the task of clean up, making excuses about having just been dead to get the job he wanted when the others tried to insist he should be repairing the ship.

He gathered the feathers, all of them, and that night he laid them out painstakingly one by one on his bed.

Two wings, perfectly sized for a dwarf.

The next day he insisted on returning right away to parlay, ignoring the team’s attempts to get him to wait until the end of the year if he was just going to die in the process.

* * *

 

John had his wings hidden this time.

Merle kept his questions useful. He had a job to do, and though it was tempted to get distracted he couldn’t do that to the team or the realms he would be putting at risk.

Still, he wondered what it must have been like for John. To meet in parlay with someone who was defying his goals, an enemy, and discover that he had fledged his wings. To spend a year waiting for that person to return, and see that they didn’t have any wings of their own.

Merle had decided that he liked John. He didn’t approve of the man’s choices – he definitely didn’t approve of the world vore tendencies. But underlying that was a genuine and honest man, who had become disenchanted with life and fallen so far down the rabbit hole that he couldn’t find his way back.

When John killed him that cycle he was ready for it. It still hurt like hell.

* * *

 

It took countless cycles for the bond engine to reconcile its problems with Merle’s wings and allow him to reform with them on his back rather than shredded in its mechanism for the first time.

What he had never mentioned to the group could not be denied any longer. They all reacted differently to the news that Merle’s soulmate was the Hunger – or, as he insisted, John. One of many souls that were a part of the Hunger, the prime individual at the head of its evil but not the whole beast.

Lucretia took the news badly. She isolated herself, kept herself away from Merle. She took her meals at different times just to avoid him. He had thought she was angry or upset with him at first. She confided in Lup that she was confused, and afraid.

Lup took the news well. A part of that might have been because she had already made the connection between the lack of shredded wings and the one cycle in which Merle had been unable to speak with John, having been killed by a poisonous plant that had looked exactly like one of his favourite vines from their home world on the day they disembarked from the ship. She had already adjusted to the idea.

If Merle had to choose between the rest, he thought the reaction from Magnus was the worst. The man was so sweet, so sympathetic, as if Merle had lost something. He treated the news like Merle should be grieving.

Maybe he should be. After all, his soulmate was the enemy of reality itself.

Merle took time, that year when his wings finally manifested, their feathers ruffled and torn, to prepare himself mentally for his visit to John. He couldn’t retract the wings – the bond engine must have reset them to the point at which the two had met for the first time. That meant he was going to have to face John with them visible.

He couldn’t decide what to do about that. Obviously, John’s wings had been manifest before his own, so he wouldn’t automatically make the connection between them. Merle could easily pretend that he had manifested his wings having found his soulmate in the most recent world. He also was not so naïve as to think John would change his mind about anything if he were to discover Merle was his soulmate.

Still, for better or worse, he desperately wanted to tell him.

John was facing out of the window when he arrived, hands behind his back as he observed the unmoving cityscape through the glass. It would have been the perfect opportunity for Merle to hide his wings, but in that moment he chose to leave them out and let the chips fall where they may.

John had set out a chessboard. These were always the best visits. Every year was different depending on John’s priorities at that time. Sometimes he would still kill Merle quickly, but if he had set out a chessboard he was usually good for at least an hour.

The game fell to stalemate, and John moved things along to questioning.

“What do you call me Merle?”

For about a second Merle thought John was trying to get at the idea of soulmates, but as John pushed for more and he tried to evade the question he came to realise that the answer was much simpler than that. So Merle told him, told the Hunger what he had called him. Before the Hunger became John, to him.

And it was his turn to ask a question, and the ones he was instructed to ask this cycle ran through his mind but did not leave his mouth.

“Are you my friend?”

John nearly blasted him then. Later Merle would realise how vulnerable he had looked in that moment. He pulled himself together, giving a speech about how emotions, friendship, love, were not something that mattered to him anymore. Argued that these were no longer things he was capable of.

Except, Merle was sure that could not be true.

“What about those wings?”

“Meaningless,” John dismissed with a scowl. He allowed them to unfurl from his back, stretching out to the edges of the room and casting darkness over Merle. “A relic of an irrelevant instinct. To bond with others, to rely on another person, is meaningless when you have the power I do Merle. The wings only exist here, in this space. I don’t need them. It’s the same as how I need to breathe here.”

“Don’t you get it, Merle?” John looked over Merle’s wings, their tattered state, with a sneer. “It’s meaningless. Life is meaningless. Love is nothing. It’s just a stopgap. Waiting, keeping time until death, and then what? I tell you Merle, no matter what your afterlife is, once you get there, _then what?_ To continue, the same, for eternity? It would be unbearable.”

“I’d argue that it’s worth bearing,” Merle reached out a hand across the table, an open offer for John to take or leave it. “If you have people around you who you want to be with for eternity.”

“You’re wrong Merle,” John sighed, ignoring the outstretched hand. “To exist Merle, to live is _horrible_.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Merle took his hand back from the table.

John had killed him over fifty times. He was the Hunger, a monster that devoured worlds. He was beyond redemption. He could not allow himself to forget that.

“I can’t keep coming back here John,” he spoke after a while, the words difficult to speak. “I can’t do this anymore.”

John’s eyes narrowed. He wouldn’t question it.

The flames started from Merle’s wings. He thought that this death hurt most of all.

* * *

 

 

They were on a beach, the waves lapping peacefully at the shore as the sun set on the horizon. John was sat on his suit jacket upon the sands. Merle followed lines where John’s wing tips had dragged behind him. He could feel his own weighing heavily at his back.

“Merle, will you sit with me for a moment?”

John looked more comfortable than he ever had in parlay. He sounded strangely calm, contented. Merle joined him in the sand.

He opened his mouth to speak, not sure what he would say.

“We don’t have to talk. Let’s just watch this together.”

It was Merle who reached out first, curling a wing tattered long ago by the bond engine around John’s back and drawing him close. John went willingly, leaning his head on Merle’s shoulder. Merle’s other wing looped round to lay as best it could across their laps, acting as a blanket.

Time passed too quickly. The waves lapped at the shore as the sun faded away.

“I was wrong Merle. Eternity like this… it would have been worth it.”

The last of the light died, and John was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

The shriek that woke Taako was loud enough to have been heard throughout the entire IPRE. Anyone hoping to sleep in that morning was rudely awakened by the alarm that followed, corridors quickly filling with panicked individuals trying to find where the base was under attack.

“What the fuck!?”

Taako groggily opened his eyes, a magic missile prepared at the tips of his fingers, and accidentally let it loose at the metallic wall. The bolts ricocheted, bouncing back at the bed. With a squeal he threw himself off the other side, hitting his head on the dressing table.

“Lup?”

His sister ignored his predicament, too focused on her own.

“No no no, this is _not_ happening, I refuse, not happening!”

“Lup?” he couldn’t stop the smile that spread involuntarily as he laid on the floor nursing his sore head. It might have been thirty years since they made the bet on whose wings would fledge first but he still recalled. “You owe me fifty gold!”

He sat up carefully, fighting back the accompanying wave of nausea. With his double vision from hitting his head, his twin sister had two sets of wings rather than one, the feathers red flecked with gold, so that they rippled with every movement and glinted in the light. Their flame-like appearance suited his sister so perfectly and made her look even more beautiful than she already was.

“That’s all you can think about right now, really?” Lup was furious, sparks literally flying from her fingertips. “Have you forgotten what this means?”

“No silly, you found your soulmate...” Taako trailed off as Lup huffed, sending a stray blast of firebolt at the mirror’s glass which melted to the floor, superheated.

“It means I can’t fly Taako. On the mission.”

“What?” That couldn’t be right.

“It was in the contract. Didn’t you read it?” Lup looked exasperated, as if she actually had expected him to read that blasted thing.

“You read it? It was five pages long!”

“Taako, it said that they won’t let anyone with a soulmate on ship. In case... in case we don’t come back,” she scowled at him. “Didn’t you wonder when no one here had wings?”

“I just thought they were all nerds and losers,” Taako shrugged. “Look it’ll be okay. That rule’s absolute nonsense. It’s always been us Lup. You and me.”

“Exactly. I don’t need anyone else.”

“Well then,” Taako got to his feet, transmuting his nightdress into an IPRE uniform, “we go tell them that. And we don’t take no for an answer.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I’m going to do,” Lup nodded, a familiar stubborn expression taking over her features. Taako knew that face, though he rarely saw it nowadays. There had been a time when he had seen it every day, whenever anyone would refer to Lup as ‘he’ before she was able to make her appearance more suited to her identity. It had usually been accompanied by burning buildings, and that was when Lup was only level one.

He climbed over the bed, not an easy feat in his high-heeled boots, and linked his arm with hers as they went out of the door. The corridor outside was empty, the alarm turned off now.

“Wonder if it’s Jimmy?” Taako wondered idly aloud.

“What?”

“Your soulmate, Jimmy?” he could just picture it now, the five foot tall human who really needed a better name than Jimmy if he was going to pull off the goth look he was going for. Taako hadn’t asked, but he was probably just an edgy cleric, at least if all the religious jewellery was anything to go by.

“No. Just no.”

“Fred?” Okay, so Fred was nice in a macho kind of way. He was a fighter, and though he probably wasn’t the strongest of the candidates for the job Taako didn’t think he was intolerable, and he had been watching Lup in a semi-interested manner.

“Fuck off Taako.”

“Barry?”

Lup snorted. She wouldn’t even dignify that one with an answer.

“Well I don’t know, we met so many people yesterday. Who did you fancy?” Taako nudged her in the ribs with a sharp elbow.

“No one,” Lup grumbled back.

“Well that’s plainly not true,” he used his free hand to tug out a small feather from her wing, waving it in front of her face.

“I wasn’t looking at the people Taako. I was focusing on the test, you know, the one that decides whether we actually get to go on a trans-planar mission?”

“Well there’s an easy way to find out,” he pointed out, trying to navigate her away from the Captain’s office corridor and towards the mess hall, where everyone rudely awakened would now be getting breakfast. “Not one person on this base had wings before yesterday.”

“Shit,” Lup froze. “Everyone will know.”

“Can’t avoid it.”

“Can avoid it,” she snapped. “You could cast an illusion on my wings? Hide them before anyone sees them?”

“Why can’t you?”

“You’re the one who does that sort of thing,” she rolled her eyes. He did know full well she did not have that spell. “I can only set them on fire. Given that it’s a more permanent solution, but that’d hurt.”

“Nope. Not doing it,” Taako told her. Lup planted her feet, refusing to move towards the mess hall.

“Then we’re going to see the Captain. Now.” Her tone left no freedom to argue. Taako was dragged along behind.

Lup stormed into the Captain’s office, slammed her hands down on the desk.

“I will not be taken off the mission.”

Captain Davenport, who still looked three coffees short of being awake, did not flinch.

“Scores are still being tallied and selections have yet to be made,” he did not even look up from the paper that he was marking, ticking off another right answer and putting a big red cross through an incorrect one. “You’re a bit early, names have not been announced yet.”

“Captain-,” a more rational male voice began to interrupt. The man who had arrived gawped at them from the doorway, red IPRE robe neatly folded in his hands along with all of his identification badges and his contract. In place of the red of the IPRE uniform he was wearing his denim jeans and a white polo shirt.

“We’re busy…” Lup spun, a mage hand flying from her own to slam the door in the man’s face. Barry quickly stuck out his own hand, holding the door open as he stared.

Barry’s wings were the same blue as his favourite denim, as simple and plain as Lup’s were bold and ostentatious.

Within an instant, Lup’s wings were gone, and a firebolt hit Barry squarely in the chest.

“This is your fault,” she was angry, but she did not scream or shout. “I don’t need some dead weight holding me back.”

“Officers,” Captain Davenport, despite his small stature, had a way of controlling a room that needed no showmanship or overstatement. He was as fierce and in command when he spoke softly, making people strain to hear, as any of the drill sergeants that had trained them with their loud voices and profanities.

Lup and Barry both turned to Davenport. Taako moved to stand beside Lup to present a united front.

“I am sure you are glad to hear that this was not an entirely unforeseen turn of events,” the Captain assured them. “Storming into my office and attacking each other aside, from what I have seen of you all so far, you are all capable candidates for the posts on offer. However, the IPRE policy remains firm. No soulmates will be left behind.”

“But…” Lup began, a single finger upheld by the Captain stopping her.

“On the other hand, soulmates undertaking the mission is not an impossible circumstance,” he suggested with a wry smile. “It is possible that you could both travel on the Starblaster, if your scores are sufficient to confirm the aptitude I have seen from you so far.”

“We don’t even know each other,” Lup argued. “I won’t be sad to leave him behind.”

Barry’s expression was very much like someone had told him that Candlenights had been cancelled, not just this year but forever. Taako only noticed it because the man had come to stand closer, better to hear the Captain’s quiet speech.

“Whilst I appreciate that, those are the rules Miss Taaco,” Davenport sighed. “Perhaps the two of you would like to spend some time together whilst I finish marking these?”

“No…”

“That was actually a command, Miss Taaco,” Davenport scolded, looking up over his half-moon glasses. “Go. I need to finish these if I’m going to have the names ready to announce at lunch as planned.”

Lup glared at Barry as she left, flipping him off as soon as they were out of sight of the Captain.

* * *

 

“Lup, it’s up,” Taako had waited in the mess hall for the list to be posted on the noticeboard, prepared to come get Lup when it was ready. He hadn’t looked – he had promised her that he wouldn’t look without her, and she hadn’t wanted to be in the mess hall where Barry might try to track her down.

Lup was laid on her back on the bed, arms and legs splayed out to the corners, wings draped across the mattress and the floor.

“Can’t move. Comfy,” she moaned. “Taako, do you realise how hard it is to get comfy with these clumsy frigging things sticking out of my back?”

“I’ll look at the list without you if you don’t come r _ight now._ ”

“Fine. Go ahead. Have fun. There’s no way Barry’s on it, so I’m fucked,” Lup tried to turn over to hide her face in the pillow but her wing was twisted oddly by that and the best she could do was wrap her wings around herself to hide her face.

“Lup,” Taako sighed, trying to pull the top wing out of the way. “You know if you’re not on that list and I am, I’m still not going?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“I mean it,” Taako promised. “You and me. Nothing can ever separate us, it’s not a thing.”

Lup’s wings opened all of a sudden, knocking Taako over as she leapt from the bed.

“Race you last one to see the list is a loser…” Lup ran out of the door, wings disappearing.

“Cheat!” Taako yelled, then proceeded to teleport into the mess hall, right next to the list. He still didn’t look at it, waiting for Lup.

Other members of the IPRE were around. Taako recognised one of the fighters he had met the day before at testing, Magnus, being congratulated by some of his fellows across the hall. He didn’t recognise the dwarf cleric getting similar response from the healer’s table, though he was a little disappointed that the handsome one he’d been flirting with the day before wasn’t going to be on the ship. A few days in close proximity and he was sure he could have convinced that guy to throw his vow of celibacy out of the window along with his underwear.

“Who’s the cheat now?” Lup demanded, glaring at him and panting for breath as she charged in through the door. “Have you looked?”

“Waited for you, dummy,” Taako rolled his eyes. “Together?”

Side by side they looked at the list.

“Hell yeah!”

Under the Arcanist - mage combat category was Lup’s name, standing out clearly to both of them. Taako took only a moment longer to find his own, just below, classed as Arcanist – non-combat. Both were noted as having secondary specialities as chefs.

“We’re fucking awesome!” Taako grinned, high fiving his sister. “Wait, that means…”

“He’s not on there,” Lup frowned.

“Yeah he is,” Taako pointed out the name to Lup – Sildar Hallwinter. “Bluejeans is just a nickname.”

“Mechanics and disaster management?” Lup questioned. “What is that even supposed to mean? Disaster management? If that’s the Captain making some sort of explosion joke about me…”

“It’s the necromancy division,” Taako breathed. Barry frigging Bluejeans, a necromancer? Go figure, he’d never have guessed. “They’re trained to resurrect if someone dies on the mission.”

“Really?” for the first time since the wings had fledged, Lup looked curious rather than appalled.

“Yeah, who knew Bluejeans was a wannabe badass?” Taako laughed. “What the fuck?”

The room had gone completely black all of a sudden, like a curtain coming over his vision. He reached out for Lup, flailing his arms wildly, heard her muffled shriek as she must have bit her lip to try not to make a sound as the same blindness affected her.

“Who are you calling a wannabe, flipwizard?” Bluejeans was clearly trying to sound scary, but he was also stifling laughter which really ruined the effect. It also gave them an advantage on their saving throws, so Taako couldn’t complain too much.

He was stood not far from them, hands in the pockets of his jeans and once more wearing the red robe that was the major part of their uniforms. He was focused mainly on Lup, waiting for her reaction to his spell.

“Looks like we’re both going?” he sounded sheepish when he spoke to her, embarrassed almost.

“Like I was going to let a dork like you stop me,” Lup glared at him. “Now that’s over with though you can stay away from me.”

“Lup…”

“That was not a suggestion,” she flipped him off with both hands, and a mage hand between them. “This? Never gonna happen. I’m _so_ out of your league.”

“Yeah,” Barry agreed, despondent.

* * *

 

Taako watched his sister, curled up with Barry at the water’s edge. He would have to go inside soon, unless he wanted to risk seeing something decidedly not PG-13, but it was nice to see them relaxed like this. It had become rarer to witness, ever since they had decided what they were going to do, what they had to do. Becoming liches was not going to be easy. They knew that, but it was their greatest hope of having the power to defeat the hunger.

If anyone could do it, it was them. Being a lich without going mad required absolute determination, and they were the most stubborn people he knew – Lup, for holding out on Barry for over fifty years, even though he knew she had fallen in love with the guy the moment he didn’t hold back and blinded her in the mess hall. Barry, for remaining completely in love with Lup and devoted to her, saving her life countless times over the years even though he had to sacrifice his own more than once to do so.


	4. Lucretia/Davenport

He had been worried that he would be accused of favouritism at first, until the scores were reported. Testing the candidates as they did could at least provide evidence to his superiors that the decision was made based on ability alone.

Her wings were stunning, pure and unblemished teal, the colour of her favourite flowing dresses and reminiscent of the ocean beside which she had been born. He was fascinated by them, and by her. He could not act on that fascination, not until after the mission. He had to be professional. He was the Captain, after all.

Lucretia had amazed him. He had thought when he found his soulmate they would be a gnome, like him. He had thought they would be plain, not beautiful and elegant like her. He had hoped that they would be intelligent – that they would be bold enough to challenge him. He had never thought he would be able to connect with someone who could not match him in intellectual conversation. He was certainly not disappointed.

She was shy, but she had not let that stop her. She had managed to get into the IPRE programme regardless, had passed every preliminary test, had come in at the top of all candidates on the tests for recruiting a record keeper, and if that was not enough, she had magic as well. She was perfect for the mission.

She was perfect for him, but that would have to wait until afterwards, if she was even interested.

He wasn’t much of a catch, he knew. He had fought his way to the top against all odds to be the Captain of the Starblaster and be selected for this mission. He had done so despite the stigma, the whispers. He was young, he was just a gnome. He was underestimated. He used it to his advantage at times, but when faced with his soulmate for the first time he wished he was different. Impressive. Handsome. Even human might be an improvement.

He had known the moment he saw her. He didn’t need the wings to tell him.

He wondered what she had thought of him, when they met. He could not imagine that she would have felt the same.

His own wings were sharp at their tips, flecked black and white like the underside of a peregrine’s. Their wingspan was less than half the size of hers. The difference between them was stark, painfully obvious.

Neither of them talked about it. They met again the next day, closed their wings, and carried on. Lucretia documented his meetings, and he carried on with his work.

* * *

 

They were lonely.

It didn’t matter that the seven of them spent every minute of the day together, that they were bonded together more closely than any family. Lucretia and Davenport were lonely, kept separate by their own insistence.

It remained unspoken. They both understood why they could not allow anything to happen between them. Davenport was the Captain, and he needed to be impartial and focused. He had to be the leader, now more than ever.

Most cycles were busy. These were the easy ones; they had plenty to do, plenty to distract them.

The hardest cycles were quiet. They would find the light early, or the plane they were on was uninhabited by creatures. They would have a peaceful time, and the group would bond. Lucretia and Davenport kept carefully apart.

It took more than seventy cycles before they finally had no choice but to work closely together. The others had set out to find the light, leaving them behind with the Starblaster. They had not returned.

They had six months with only the other for company. Familiarity was inevitable.

Davenport still enforced the boundaries of his position. He doubted that Lucretia cared. She never said anything.

* * *

 

A century had passed since they flew on their first launch of the Starblaster, and they were home.

It might not have been the home they left all those years ago, but it was the home that they and fate had chosen. They had the light, they had separated it into the relics. They had their lives back.

Davenport was still Captain, but there was no longer a ship to fly. He was still commander, but the boundaries were breaking down.

A century after their wings had first fledged, he finally dared to approach Lucretia as more than just her Captain.

He took her to the coast, the city a mimic of the one she had grown up in. They walked barefoot in the sand, and they talked for hours. About the last century, and the years before. About the years ahead. Time, stretching out into the future, finally theirs once more. The clock finally ticking.

The end of the year came. They tentatively waited on the Starblaster, not telling the others. If the Hunger came, they would fly the ship away and start again.

The Hunger did not come. They held one another close as the sun rose, drifting to sleep in each other’s arms.

* * *

 

The years passed.

Lucretia had always been shy. After a century of knowing they were soulmates, and keeping themselves apart, Davenport had not expected their relationship to progress quickly. He respected her boundaries as she had respected his.

Despite them, he knew she loved him. And he loved her. Unquestioningly.

She spoke, now and again, about the pain the relics were causing her. The sight of the world so wounded, not dead or devoured by the Hunger but breaking all the same. He comforted her as best he could. There was no easy way around this. This was what they had to do.

* * *

 

If she had known, she would never have gone through with it.

The void fish took in what she gave it. It removed the memories she wrote. It removed the facts of the mission. It removed the Starblaster.

And it removed Davenport.

She wrote of him more than the rest. The others, they had factual accounts. Stories that the general public needed to read. A professional log.

Davenport… he was her heart. She wrote of him more than anyone else. She put her heart and soul into words – and his.

It was only once she was done, once she returned to her chambers on the Starblaster and sat on the edge of the bed, waiting to see what he would say, what he would remember, that she realised what she had done. She waited for him to reproach her, waited for the mistake she dreaded to come to light. Waited for him to remember something from their hundred-year journey.

She should have held a very different fear.

“Davenport?”

She looked up at him, confused and frightened. He looked so lost, so afraid, curled up in a tight ball with his peregrine wings wrapped close around him.

She tried to reassure him. She tried to speak with him, ask him questions, about the Starblaster. About his life before, and since.

But he had told her everything, in those years since time began to matter again. And she, being a reliable journal keeper, had documented them all.

She held him close, whispered secrets into his ear. Things that he couldn’t know. Things that she wished he would know again.

She kept him with her, as time passed. She could not leave him. She would never abandon him.

He didn’t remember anything, but he recognised her as something. He saw her as safe.

It devastated her that she was the one to have hurt him so.

She told herself he would forgive her one day, when she had gathered all the relics, when they were safely protected from the Hunger and this was all over. She didn’t believe her own lies.

Her wings were like nothing anyone at the bureau had ever seen, ghostly and almost transparent. They called them beautiful. She knew better.

He was her soulmate, and her wings betrayed the truth. She had left him faded, a ghost of who he once was.

* * *

 

After the day of story and song, Davenport’s wings made more sense to him.

Peregrine wings; designed perfectly for flight. Able to travel faster than those who would follow him. Able to fly away from her, until such time as he could forgive her.

He set out across the ocean, gliding on the thermals. Perhaps he would come back some day.

A sea breeze swept away the thermal, and he swore reflexively as he righted himself.

“Davenport!”

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are a writer's life blood. I would be delighted to hear from you.


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